Welcome to Vermont, the tourist mecca where this month two very different kinds of performance art dramatized life in the ICE age.

Following a bungled immigration raid in South Burlington on March 11 that spawned a chaotic hours-long standoff during which hundreds of protesters confronted federal agents and local and state police, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott condemned the operation in no uncertain terms. 

“From my perspective, what unfolded yesterday . . . was totally unnecessary,” the governor said. “The actions of federal law enforcement from outside the state further demonstrates a lack of training, coordination, leadership and outdated tactics that put both peaceful protesters and Vermont law enforcement in a difficult situation.”

All true. The three people taken into custody when the federal agents kicked in the front door did not include the person they were looking for; all three have since been ordered released by federal judges amid intimations that their rights may have been violated.

But we think the governor missed a salient point. A key objective of President Trump’s mass deportation effort is to intimidate while sowing chaos. The idea is to strike fear into immigrant communities and their supporters by the aggressive use of brutal tactics in very public venues. The fact that these agents are often incompetent is in some sense beside the point; the blundering and blustering are all part of a drama being enacted for a wider audience.

A statement by Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George,  who grew up in the Upper Valley, was closer to the mark. “ICE chose escalation over professionalism at every turn,” she said. “The result was chaos, harm and fear visited on our community by a federal agency that appears more interested in spectacle than safety.”

Let’s call this performative art the theater of cruelty.

A week or so later, a group of activists seized on a Vermont icon, the tour bus, to stage an elaborate bit of performance art of their own. Their object was to highlight the state’s role in hosting facilities for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and other branches of the Department of Homeland Security.

“Despite its liberal reputation,” The Boston Globe reported, “the state has become home in recent decades to a large number of DHS facilities, including surveillance centers that fuel its immigration enforcement actions throughout the country.” 

According to the Globe, the mini-bus loads of faux tourists, all of whom were activists who volunteered for the gig, visited various sites in the Chittenden County area, which they said is home to at least eight Homeland Security facilities, making it one of the county’s largest employers.

They include ICE’s Law Enforcement Support Center, which facilitates the sharing of intelligence with local police throughout the country; and the National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center, which uses social media and other data banks to track immigrants ICE is seeking to deport.

This bit of theater had a serious purpose (as well as perhaps gently mocking the state’s obsession with tourism.) We suspect that Vermont’s role as a Homeland Security stronghold is not widely known even to state residents. Unlike fall foliage, maple syrup, dairy farms and skiing, it is a distinction Vermont would probably rather do without. But if you are going to drink a toast to the tourist dollar, why not have it on ICE?

We’ll take ours neat.